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Does size matter?

As England flapped listlessly on Australia's hook during the death throes of the second ODI at Old Trafford, Steven Finn came to the crease, a giant beanpole in England's comedy red garb (is there another kit design in all of cricket that makes its wearers look more like they're on their way to work in a fast-food outlet?). He had some sport, too, clearing the ropes before perishing from another skier. Finn is six feet eight inches in height, and the bat looks strangely diminished in his hands. There is an incongruity to seeing a lofty man at the crease.

Kevin Pietersen, at six feet four, is taller than every player ahead of him on the all-time list of Test run scorers: he has incorporated the advantages of his height into his technique like no one before. As the human race continues its generational increases in size it's natural that there will be more players of Pietersen's height moving up the list. But will there be an upper limit?

One of the geniuses of cricket is its scale. For some reason, the distance of 22 yards works perfectly with the size of the bat and the ball and the players. Through the game's history it has allowed bowlers of all sizes and speeds to compete with batsmen of all heights and girths on an equal basis. No one has yet bowled so quickly or advanced from the crease so far as to challenge the dimensions of the arena.

Not all sports have been able to withstand the forward march of human advancement. The world's greatest golf courses have routinely been extended by hundreds of yards to incorporate better equipment, training and conditioning. Although the tennis court remains the same size, a glance at the US Open last week showed that many of the players, at least in the men's tournament, played most of the game from about eight feet behind the baseline to allow for the increased speed of the ball - which has already been altered to slow it down. (Cricket will be spared that for as long as bats and balls are made from organic material.)

At six feet ten, Will Jefferson was perhaps the tallest specialist batsman to have played professional cricket. With his helmet on, he was all of seven feet. There are some famous pictures of him at the crease with James Taylor, who, at somewhere around five feet four, had to crane his neck just to see as high as Jefferson's armpit.

You'd think that his size would have made Jefferson a nightmare to bowl to - after all, what's a good length to a man whose pads just about cover his knees and whose bat appears as a toy in his hands? However, it might also mean he's actually too big to benefit from the scale of the game. Just the distance between his eyes and the ball must hurt to an extent, as must the relative size of the bat. He must bend low to defend the stumps but work out what to do with the short ball that would fly over the head of a smaller player. Only Pietersen has really reconciled these technical issues, obscuring the stumps with his trigger movement, and playing his hook and pull shots from the front foot.

It's natural to imagine that as people get larger, they become more powerful. A look at heavyweight boxing, for example, reveals that its current generation are bigger, heavier and stronger than any who have come before. But are they better? It seems as though at some point above six and a half feet, the rules begin to change and athletic ratios do not continue exponentially upwards.

Instead, the giant sportsman encounters his own set of problems. It's a measure of the greatness of cricket that it can incorporate them into its physics.

I think batsmen shouldn't be too tall (not close to 7ft) but invariably, the very tall bowlers have always had an advantage. If it wasn't for their height some of those bowlers would actually have been very mediocre. The extra height and ability to hit the deck hard gives them a big advantage.

Just look at Tremlett, Finn, Rankin. All around 6ft 8in and all pretty good quality bowlers. They all hit the deck hard and are able to generate bounce off the dullest of surfaces because of their height and broad shoulders. Shorter bowlers (around 6ft) have always had to have something special going for them. Most of them have had superb athletic physiques (bar few).

T20s are changing the landscape of cricket - into that of a power game. And I am all for it. The likes of Gayle, Pollard, Finch are dominating plainly because of their brute force. Great to watch. Of course, they still have to be pretty good cricketers in their own right, but the power just magnifies their impact.

Posted by &nbsp
on (September 11, 2013, 16:11 GMT)

I was surprised, when I saw the Proteas in person, how slight Dale Steyn is. I'm 174cm tall and stood next to him in flat shoes I couldn't have been more than a couple of cm shorter. He's definitely a bit of an anomaly in the trend of tall, stocky quicks and proof positive that talent can get past any height disadvantage.

Posted by &nbsp
on (September 11, 2013, 10:13 GMT)

As for bowlers, it's interesting to note that a lot of the real express bowlers (Larwood, Akhtar, Lee) aren't overly tall - at least compared to their compadres (Larwood, certainly not, but Lee and Akhtar are within an inch or two over 6 foot, from what I can tell), not the tall and burly ones (other than the Windies' pace battery of the '70s onwards - other than Malcolm Marshall, of course). It'll be also interesting to see how Mohammad Irfan fares at an apparent 7'1" on the old scale.

Posted by &nbsp
on (September 10, 2013, 18:57 GMT)

I think shorter batsman get to play off the back foot more so probably have more time to play. taller players can get forward more easily but sacrafice time to play, suggesting Pietersen is an exception.

Posted by Mittaraghava
on (September 10, 2013, 17:12 GMT)

The typical successful batsman appears to be on the shorter side.The advantages being he has good reflexes,he can duck the bouncers easily,he can run fast between the wickets,he can defend the ball which is keeping low on certain types of pitches.In contrast the typically successful pace bowlers appears to be tall.His advantages being he can have long run up which help their pace ,he can bowl bouncer and yorkers at will,his long arms may help to swing the ball better,his appearence may look intimidating to the batsman.But exceptions are always there and as the author correctly mentioned players of all types of physical appearences seem to adapt to this game of "cricket".

Posted by &nbsp
on (September 10, 2013, 15:32 GMT)

"Size does matter" ...... Brock Lesnar words. But in cricket and especially for batsmen, I don't think Size matters very much. Sachin Tendulkar, Hanif Muhammad and Sunil Gavaskar were not very tall figure. On the other hand, we have batting legends like Ricky Ponting, Hashim Amla, Geoffery Boycott, Javed Miandad, Rahul Dravid etc who have normal height. Kevin Pieterson, Greame Smith, Jacques Kallis, Chris Gayle all are above 6ft. But they all are integral part of their teams.

Size may matter in Wrestling, fighting or in Boxing but in Cricket I don't think Size does matter very much.

Posted by &nbsp
on (September 10, 2013, 14:57 GMT)

The idea that 22 yards is a perfect dimension is flawed; the game would simply change or adjust if we used 30 or 15. A 30 yard pitch would mean more runs and less wickets. A substantially shorter pitch would cause more problems as at some point the distance is such that reaction times are not adequate to deal with the quickest bowling. It has been argued that increasing physical fitness and size means that we have more quick bowlers who push the limits of reaction time now - hence the need for greater protection (this does not mean that bowlers of the past were all slower, just fewer of them could bowl at top speed). The change from back foot to front foot no-ball law helped with reaction times, plus covered wickets also allow greater predictability, hence the average runs/ innings remains the same.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jon HottenJon Hotten is the author of Muscle and The Years Of The Locust, neither of which is about cricket, and writes the blog The Old Batsman, which is. @theoldbatsman